Chrome Beta for Android has full screen browsing very well hidden

Does the image above look a little weird? That is right, it is Chrome running full screen on an Android device. A curious Nexus 7 user (Smackel from Reddit) accidentally found out we can turn this hidden feature on by pulling some strings and making a few tricks.

It ressembles the way Mac computers can turn apps full screen, getting rid of all the icons, bars and extra bells & whistles. Similarly, this full screen mode makes the browser take over the notification bar, giving the user a few more millimeters of navigating power.

It is interesting to think that just a few milimiters of screen real estate can make such a huge difference. Browsing suddenly feels much cleaner and more pleasing to the eye. But let’s cut through the chase – how exactly do we do this?

First, you need to have an Android 4.0+ device and download Chrome Beta (not Chrome for Android). If you fit the lonely requirement, you can go full speed ahead! Simply follow the next steps:

Keep in mind this is not an official feature just yet, so it’s not perfect. Full screen mode will go away after you close Chome Beta, but you pretty much have to kill it. It continues to work if you leave the app running in the background. If Chrome Beta gets closed, though, you have to follow the last 3 steps again.

This is more than likely no accident or bug. We are willing to bet Google has been secretly planning to introduce this this as a feature in a future update. The coding must be there. If it is a bug, though, we agree with Smackel that is is about the coolest one we have seen.

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I don’t know, rather than this “full screen” I’d prefer an auto-hiding omnibar, like the AOSP browser.

Tomáš Petrík

See, that’s exactly why I didn’t like the original browser and switched to Chrome.
So – Google, please, don’t bring this feature to Chrome. Or, let us choose in settings.

Francisco

Excellent! Just finished all the steps on my SG3 & it’s working just fine. Thanks for the tip y’all.

prairiedogn

useful

Guest

Wondering much my is going suffer running chrome beta on note2

AndroidProfit

Wondering how much my battery will suffer using chrome beta

C-Law

Why would battery suffer?

Aaron Soles

That’s definitely not a nexus 7.

OptimusL

Ugh seriously??

Edgar Cervantes

No. That is my galaxy nexus. The nexus 7 I was referring to was the reddit guy’s.

chuckles87

I have full screen on regular chrome with the exception of my notification bar with no modifications and I would not care to hide my notification bar at all so im good

Joe Steiger

I still can’t launch it. It crashes right away.

Ryan O’Neill

So the code is there, but no way to activate it in the UI yet.

Sharky

Too much effort, but would like to see a ‘full screen’ option in the menu. Simple swipe down from the top of the screen could return to normal.

paul meredith

This works great on my OG RAZR .
So clean and easy on the eyes.
I can’t believe a few MM makes such I big differance.

Anthony Maciel

No need to go through all that. The full screen API is separate from the web gl stuff, so you can access it directly without changing any settings at this demo page: http://davidwalsh.name/demo/fullscreen.php or any of several just like it.

Would be nice to see this as a supported feature. It’s part of the reason I switched to Boat browser. The other part is the nasty problem of Chrome and Chrome Beta crashing my Nexus 10 a lot.

roberthenderson

You can easily browse full screen in the standard browser. Just go to lab under settings. There you will also find the setting to choose pop up navigation buttons, which is what nexus and every other butt ugly black bar/tap to activate onscreen button should have been.